How does what we have learned in these first two modules impact your own teaching? If it doesn’t, discuss why. 

I’ve learnt quite a lot actually on the course so far. Things I hadn’t really considered or were somewhere in the periphery of my head and I hadn’t given much thought to them in an engaged (used that intentionally!) way.

I’d highlight the importance of a community online because I largely considered the students individually and the relationship is entirely asynchronous (in my context of online School-based language & academic literacy support this is not the first thing that comes to mind – I had never thought of the online experience as a community – you may recall that my work is largely ‘transactional’: As agreed with the School, I Student give You Teacher some of my written work, and I Teacher give You Student some feedback on it). I focus on the relationship with that individual, providing them with formative, transferable feedback, trying to make it as personal and meaningful/useful as possible. In this context, I then grappled with student engagement – or lack of it at times – and how to deal with this. Perhaps balancing the community aspect with the individual might help here.

Time and (a)synchronicity are not key things in my online working life to date. Or at least that has been my understanding. Maybe I’m wrong here. It has all been asynchronous but maybe this is part of the engagement problem. I have really liked reading what others, more experienced in this, have had to say and I need their words of wisdom to work their way around my head for a while before I come to any conclusion about what I can do with this knowledge.

How does engaged teaching online complicate what we do as a university?  

I’m not sure how to answer this question. Maybe by the middle of next week I’ll know! For the moment, engaged teaching impacts on our time and that is not always our own. I have a work allocation and it is not possible to just decide for myself when I will do something. There is a degree of flexibility with chunks of time I have across a semester – and indeed because of that I’m experimenting with a very flexible language support approach that allows students to submit work to me for feedback when it suits them, rather than me – but, like many academic staff, I have a web of commitments, most of which are fixed because they’re F2F at a particular time. Online engagement requires a lot more commitment, and this certainly seems borne out by what I’ve learnt on this course so far. I’m not sure if I’m answering this question as expected, but it’s my initial response.

It’s been a good two modules. My sincere thanks to the organisers and to my fellow travellers in this little community!

End of Module 2 reflections / David Caulton’s "An Edinburgh Model for Online Teaching" blog by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0